Gender Strategies

Gender Strategies

What?

This research examines how women work in practice to leverage inclusion in the space of the ‘formalised political unsettlement’. It has two distinct components one relating to gender norms as a tool for leveraging change, and the other relating to the ways in which institutionalising gender gains plays out. The first ‘gender norms’ component examines the extent to which, and under what domestic conditions, international norms for gender equality provide leverage to non-elite groups (in this case women’s movement and organisations) to bargain over inclusive political settlements. It also considers the role of feminists in transnational non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations in supporting or potentially impeding these interventions. The second part of the project will examine the trajectory of establishing and implementing new institutions in periods of transition. Bringing a gender lens to institutionalist theory, this component considers how the ‘nesting’ of new ‘engendered’ institutions in wider power structures operates to consolidate or undo, gender mainstreaming gains achieved in that institution.

How?

Both parts of the project will involve desk-based review. The gender and norms project will also involve qualitative research in four countries two of which are key case studies namely: DRC, Colombia, Philippines, and Sierra Leone. The second feminist institutionalist component of the work will draw on the work of Mackay and her collaborators in the Feminist and Institutionalism International Network (FIIN).

Why?

Little is known about effective strategies for transformation, by examining how women engage with domestic reform processes and use international norms or moments of institutional reform to do so, we hope to understand effective strategies for change.